She felt astonishingly peaceful. Nicole closed her eyes briefly and when she opened them again she was a ten-year-old girl, weeping beside her father as her mother's bier was consumed by flames in a burial ceremony befitting the Senoufo queen. The old man, her great-grandfather Omeh, dressed in a frightening mask to scare off any demons that might try to accompany Nicole's mother to the afterlife, came over beside her and took her hand. "It is as the chronicles prophesied, Ronata," he said, using Nicole's Senoufo name, "our blood has been scattered to the stars."
The variegated mask of the shaman disappeared into another set of colors, these in bands streaking around Dr. Blue's head. Again Nicole heard Ellie's voice. My daughter is a hybrid, she thought to herself without emotion. I have given birth to something that is more than human. A new kind of evolution has begun.
Her mind drifted again and she was a great bird/plane flying high in the dark above the savannas of the Ivory Coast. Nicole had left the Earth, turned her back on the Sun, and blasted like a rocket toward the blackness and void beyond the solar system. In her-mind's eye she could clearly see Omeh's face. "Ronata," he called into the night sky in the Ivory Coast, "do not forget. You are the chosen one."
And could he really have known, Nicole thought, still in the twilight zone between waking and sleeping, all those years ago, in Africa, on Earth? And if so, how? Or is there still another dimension to seeing that we have only just begun to understand?
Richard and Nicole were sitting together in the near darkness. They were temporarily alone. Ellie and Eponine were out with Archie, making all the arrangements for the departure the next morning.
"You've been very quiet all day," Richard said.
"Yes, I have," Nicole answered. "I have felt strange, almost drugged, ever since that last procedure this morning… My memory is unusually active. I've been thinking about my parents. And Omeh. And visions I had years ago."
"Were you surprised at the results of the tests?" Richard asked after a short silence.
"Not really. I guess so much has happened to us… And you know, Richard, I can still remember when Ellie was conceived. You were not really yourself again yet."
"I talked to Ellie and Archie quite a bit this afternoon while you were napping. The changes the octospiders induced in Ellie are permanent, like mutations. Nikki probably has some of the same characteristics—it depends on the exact genetic mixture. Of course hers will be diluted by another generation…"
Richard didn't finish his thought. He yawned, and then reached over for Nicole's hand. They sat quietly together for several minutes before Nicole broke the silence.
"Richard, do you remember my telling you about the Senoufo chronicles? About the woman from the tribe, the daughter of a queen, who was prophesied to carry the Senoufo blood 'even unto the stars'?"
"Vaguely," Richard answered. "We haven't spoken about it for a long time."
"Omeh was certain that I was the woman in the chronicles… 'the woman without companion,' he called her. Do you believe there is any possible way that we can have knowledge of the future?"
Richard laughed. "Everything in nature follows certain laws. Those laws can be expressed as differential equations in time. If we know precisely the initial conditions of the system at any given epoch, and the exact equations representing the laws of nature, then theoretically we can predict all outcomes. We can't, of course, because our knowledge is always imperfect, and the rules of chaos limit the applicability of our estimation techniques."
"Suppose," Nicole said, propping herself up on an elbow, "there were individuals or even groups who did not know mathematics, but could somehow see or feel both the laws and the initial conditions you mentioned. Couldn't they perhaps intuitively solve at least part of the equations and predict the future using insight that we cannot model or quantify?"
"It's possible," said Richard. "But remember, extraordinary claims require—"
"—extraordinary evidence. I know," said Nicole. She paused for a moment. "I wonder what destiny is, then. Is it something we humans make up after the fact? Or is it real? And if destiny really exists as a concept, how can it be explained by the laws of physics?"
"I'm not following you, darling," Richard said.
"It's confusing even to me," Nicole said. "Am I who I am because, as Omeh insisted when I was a little girl, it was always my destiny to travel in space? Or am I the person I am because of all the choices I have personally made and the skills I have consciously developed?"
Richard laughed again. "Now you're very close to one of the fundamental philosophical conundrums, the debate between God's omniscience and man's free will."
"I didn't mean to be," said Nicole reflectively. "I just can't shake the notion that nothing that has happened in my absolutely incredible life would have been a surprise to Omeh."
7
Their departure breakfast was a feast. The octospiders provided more than a dozen different fruits and vegetables, as well as a hot, thick cereal made, according to Archie and Ellie, from the very tall grasses just north of the power plant. While they were eating, Richard asked the octospider what had happened to the avian hatchlings Tammy and Timmy, as well as the manna melons and the sessile material. He was not satisfied with the translated, somewhat vague response that all the other species were fine.
"Look, Archie," Richard said in his characteristic brusque manner. He was now comfortable enough with his alien host that he no longer felt it necessary to be overly polite. "I have far more than a casual interest in those creatures. I rescued them and raised them from birth by myself. I would like to see them, even if only briefly… Under any circumstances, I think I deserve a more definitive answer to my question."
Archie stood up, ambled out the door of the suite, and returned in a few minutes. "We have arranged for you to see the avians for yourself later on today during our journey back to your friends," he said. "As for the other species, two of the eggs have just completed germination and are in the infant myrmicat stage. Their development is being closely monitored on the other side of our domain and it is not possible for you to visit them."
Richard's face brightened. 'Two of them germinated! How did you accomplish that?"
"Eggs of the sessile species must be placed in a thermally controlled liquid for a month of your time before the embryonic development process will even begin," Ellie interpreted Archie's colors very slowly. "The temperature must be maintained within an extremely small range, less than a degree by your measures, at the same value that is optimal for the myrmicat manifestation of the species. Otherwise the growth and development process does not occur."
Richard was on his feet. "So that's the secret," he said, nearly shouting. "Dammit, I should have figured it out. I certainly had plenty of clues, both from the conditions inside their habitat and those murals they showed me." He began to pace around the room. "But how did the octospiders know?" he said, with his back to Archie.
Archie replied quickly after Ellie's translation. "We had information from the other octospider colony. Their records explained the entire metamorphosis of the sessiles."
It seemed too simple to Richard. He suspected that maybe their alien colleague was not telling him the whole truth. Richard was ready to ask some more questions when Dr. Blue came into the suite, followed by three other octospiders, two of whom were carrying a large hexagonal object wrapped in a paperlike material.
"What's this?" Richard asked.
'This is our official farewell party," Ellie answered. "Together with a present from the residents of the city."
One of the new octos asked Ellie if all the humans could gather outside on the avenue for the departure ceremony. The humans picked up their belongings and walked through the hallway out into the brighter lights. Nicole was surprised by what she saw. Except for the octospiders who filed out of their suite behind them, the avenue was deserted. Even the colors of the gardens seemed more muted, as if they had somehow been temporarily brightened by all the surrounding
activity two days earlier when Richard and Nicole had arrived.
"Where is everyone?" Nicole asked Ellie.
"It's very quiet on purpose," her daughter replied. "The octos didn't want to overwhelm you again."
The five octospiders arranged themselves in a line in the middle of the avenue, with the pyramid-shaped building directly behind them. The two octos on the right side balanced the hexagonal package between them. It was larger than they were. The four humans were lined up opposite the octospiders, just in front of the gates to the city. The octospider in the center, whom Ellie introduced as the "Chief Optimizer" (based on Archie's description of the duties of the octospider leader), then stepped forward to speak.
The Chief Optimizer expressed its gratitude to Richard, Nicole, Ellie, and Eponine, including a personal note with each thank-you, and said that it hoped this brief interaction would be the "first of many" that would lead to more understanding between the two species. The octospider then indicated that Archie was going to return with the humans, not only so that the interaction could be continued and expanded, but also to demonstrate to the other humans that a mutual trust between the two species now existed.
During a brief pause Archie shuffled forward into the zone between the two lines and Ellie symbolically welcomed him to their traveling party. The two octos on the right then unveiled the present, which was a magnificent detailed painting of the sight that Richard and Nicole had seen at the moment of their entrance into the Emerald City. The painting was so lifelike that Nicole was momentarily stunned. A few moments later the humans all moved closer to the painting to study its details. All the weird creatures were in the picture, including the three royal blue undulators, whose two long, upright, knobby antennae thrust upward from a teeming body mass reminded Nicole how disoriented she had been the previous day.
As she examined the painting and wondered how it could have been created, Nicole recalled the near swoon that had accompanied her actual viewing of the scene. Was I having a premonition of danger then? she mused. Or was it something else? She glanced away from the painting and watched the octospiders talking among themselves. Perhaps it was an epiphany, she thought, an instant burst of recognition of something way beyond my understanding. Some force or power never before experienced by any human being. A chill ran down her back as the gates of the Emerald City began to open.
Richard was always concerned about naming things. After less than a minute of inspection of the creatures they were going to ride, he called them "ostrichsaurs."
'That's not very imaginative, darling," Nicole chided him.
"Maybe not," he said, "but it is a perfect description. They are just like a giant ostrich with the face and neck of one of those herbivorous dinosaurs."
The creature had four birdlike legs, a soft, feathery main body with an indented bowl in the middle where four humans could easily sit, and a long neck that could be extended three meters in any direction. Since the legs were about two meters long, the neck could reach the surrounding ground without difficulty.
The two ostrichsaurs were surprisingly swift. Archie, Ellie, and Eponine rode on one of the creatures, on whose side the large hexagonal painting had been tied with a kind of twine. Nicole and Richard were by themselves on the other ostrichsaur. There were no reins or other obvious means of controlling the creatures; however, before the group departed from the Emerald City, Archie spent almost ten minutes "talking" to the ostrichsaurs.
"He's explaining the entire route," Ellie said. "And also outlining what to do in case of an accident."
"What kind of an accident?" Richard asked, but Ellie simply shrugged in reply.
At first both Richard and Nicole hung on to the "feathers" that surrounded the bowl in which they were sitting, but after a few minutes they relaxed. The ride was very smooth, with very little jostling up and down. "Now, do you suppose," Richard said after the Emerald City faded from view, "these animals naturally evolved this way, with this near perfect bowl in the middle of their backs? Or did the octospider genetic engineers somehow breed them for transportation?"
"There's no doubt in my mind at all," Nicole replied. "I believe that most of the living things we have encountered, certainly including those dark, wriggling coiled things that crawled through my skin, have been designed for a specific function by the octospiders. How could it be otherwise?"
"But you can't believe these animals were designed from scratch," Richard said. 'That would suggest an incredible technology, far beyond anything we can even imagine."
"I don't know, darling," Nicole said. "Maybe the octospiders have traveled to many different planetary systems, in each place finding life-forms that could be slightly altered to fit into their grand symbiotic schemes. But I can't accept for a minute the idea that this harmonious biology just happened by natural evolution."
The two ostrichsaurs and their five riders were guided by three of the giant fireflies. After a couple of hours, the group approached a vast lake stretching to the south and west. Both the ostrichsaurs squatted on the ground so that Archie and the four humans could descend.
"We're going to have lunch and a drink of water here," Archie said to the others. He handed Ellie a container filled with food and then led the two ostrichsaurs over to the lake. Nicole and Eponine walked off in the direction of some blue plants growing at the edge of the water, leaving Richard and Ellie by themselves.
"Your proficiency in their language is very impressive, to say the least," Richard said in between bites of food.
Ellie laughed. "I'm afraid I'm not as good as you think. The octos purposely keep their sentences very simple for me. And they speak slowly, with broad bands. But I am improving… You realize, don't you, that they are not using their true language when speaking to us? It's just a derivative form."
"What do you mean?" Richard asked.
"I explained it to Mother back at the Emerald City. I guess she didn't have a chance to tell you." Ellie swallowed before continuing. "Their true language has sixty-four color symbols, just as I mentioned, but eleven of them are not accessible to us. Eight lie in the infrared part of the spectrum, and another three in the ultraviolet. So we can only distinguish clearly fifty-three of their symbols. This was quite a problem in the beginning. Luckily, five of the eleven outside symbols are clarifiers. Anyway, for our benefit they have developed what amounts to a new dialect of their language, using only the color wavelengths that we can see. Archie says that this new dialect is already being taught in some of their advanced classes."
"Amazing," Richard said. "You mean they have adjusted their language to accommodate our physical limitations?"
"Not exactly, Father. They still use their true language when talking to each other. That's why I cannot always understand what they are saying. However, this new dialect has been developed, and is now being expanded, just to make communications with us as easy as possible."
Richard finished his lunch. He was about to ask Ellie another question about the octospider language when he heard Nicole yell. "Richard," she shouted from fifty meters away, "look over there, in the air, toward the forest."
Richard craned his neck and shaded his eyes. In the distance he could see two birds flying toward them. For some reason his recognition was delayed until he heard the familiar shrieking sound. Then he jumped up and ran in the direction of the avians. Tammy and Timmy, now full-grown, swooped down out of the sky and landed beside him. Richard was ecstatic. His wards jabbered incessantly and pressed their velvet underbellies against him for a rub.
They looked perfectly healthy. There was not a trace of sadness in their huge expressive eyes. A few minutes later Timmy suddenly stepped away, shrieked something in a very loud voice, and became airborne. Within a few minutes the avian returned with a companion, a female with an orange velvet covering unlike any Richard had ever seen. Richard was a little confused, but he did realize that Timmy was trying to introduce him to his mate.
The remainder of the reunion with the avians las
ted only ten or fifteen minutes. Archie insisted, after he first explained that the vast lake system supplied almost half of the fresh water in the octospider domain, that the entourage needed to continue on its journey. Richard and Nicole were already in the bowl on the back of their ostrichsaur when the three avians departed. Tammy hovered over them for a good-bye jabber, obviously disturbing the creature on which they were riding. At length she followed her brother and his mate in their flight toward the forest.
Richard was strangely quiet as their mounts also headed north in the direction of the forest. "They really mean a lot to you, don't they?" Nicole said.
"Absolutely," her husband replied. "I was all alone except for the hatchlings for a long time. Timmy and Tammy depended on me for their survival… Committing myself to rescuing them was probably the first selfless act of my life. It opened up new dimensions of both anxiety and happiness for me."
Nicole reached over and took Richard's hand. "Your emotional life has had an odyssey of its own," she said softly, "every bit as diverse as the physical journey you have experienced."
Richard kissed her. "I still have a few demons that are not yet exorcised," he said. "Maybe, with your help, in another ten years I'll be a decent human being."
"You don't give yourself enough credit," Nicole said.
"My brain I give plenty of credit," Richard said with a grin, changing the tone of the conversation. "And do you know what it is thinking right now? Where did that avian with the orange underbelly come from?"
Nicole looked puzzled. "From the second habitat" she replied. "You yourself told us that there must have been a population of almost a thousand before Nakamura's troops invaded. The octospiders must have rescued a few also."
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